


a love so real

by renaissance



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Healing, Ignores The Magicians Season 4 Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Speculation, Timeline Shenanigans, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 17:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18348107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: All it takes is time, to find the right place. Or, Quentin and Eliot find a future in their past.





	a love so real

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twokinds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twokinds/gifts).



> this is for ao3 user twokinds who absolutely ruined my life with this idea a couple days ago. how dare you but also thank you for joining me in the Queliot Feelings Spiral 2k19
> 
> title could be from anywhere but spiritually it is the refrain from sharon van etten's "jupiter 4," which is the soundtrack tune to this fic.

Somewhere in the murky depths of middle school, Quentin had learnt what became of a dying star. It kept getting heavier and heavier, brighter and brighter, until it could grow no more. Then, the star collapsed in on itself, all its heat and energy curling into infinitesimally small space, before the pressure became too much and it all detonated, all the atoms and molecules flying out into space at impossibly fast speeds.

He always got stuck on that part; it didn’t make sense from the second row to the back of the science classroom, but then the sheer scale of space rendered most things astronomical illogical to Quentin. As a metaphor for grief, though, he had always found the dying star more than adequate. The bottling it up, the letting it fester, the part where you realised that was never going to work and before you knew it you exploded like the mentos and diet coke experiment the class next door were doing while you were stuck learning about stars.

But then, in the grip of grief, he never stopped to consider the bittersweet twist to the ending: from the dead star’s ashes came the elements that would form life throughout the Universe.

Quentin had never once stopped to think about what would come after. What he’d find in the ashes. Now, in the midst of the unequivocal _aftermath_ , he thinks back, digs through his emotional memories for any indication that he had ever expected it to end. He thought that maybe if he’d been able to conceptualise the proverbial light through the gloom of a well-fortified tunnel, that would mean he was getting better. Healing. But he hadn’t: he’d only looked at the Monster wearing Eliot’s skin and thought, this is it, this is how it ends. He was the same fatalistic depressive he’d always been. All explosion and no rejuvenation. Not even an explosion. A series of dull shocks; static electricity from a handrail, sparks from a lighter playing at his fingertips. It was like pins and needles after months of stagnant numbness.

“Now that it’s done,” Eliot says, twirling his tie between his fingers, “I think it’s about time we went to Fillory.”

 _We_. Eliot is standing in front of the mirror fixing his tie like he’d fixed his hair, his stubble, the blood under his fingernails. Quentin is sitting in the bathtub. There’s no water. It’s palatial, so vast that it shouldn’t by rights fit in a penthouse apartment. Quentin loves it; or, rather, he loves that he could turn the faucet and drown in it. He might never get up again.

Margo is perched on the bathtub’s edge. “Great idea.” She has this way of making even sincerity sound sarcastic. “If I never have to spend another night in Barbie’s Cursed Dream Home, it won’t be too soon. Except you forgot the part where I’m banished for life.”

Eliot’s face falls.

“But you should go,” Margo says, softer. “Take Quentin with you.”

“Yeah,” Quentin says, because he hates the house too, and it _would_ be nice, “only, let’s—I don’t know, let’s give it a few days?”

Eliot finishes with his tie and reaches across to ruffle Quentin’s hair. Quentin doesn’t flinch away from the touch, though he wants to. He wants to look at the man in front of him and feel the same revulsion he felt when this was the Monster. God knows he’s tried, but he can’t. Not with Eliot.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? From the moment came back, Eliot’s been acting as though everything is perfectly normal, which is exactly how Quentin knows something is wrong. Eliot hasn’t taken any time to be alone, to recover, like they’d all thought he might. Surely he needs to _sleep_. But, no, it’s business as usual, as far as Eliot is concerned. Dressing sharp, cracking jokes. No time for grief. Probably on the surface it looks no different to Eliot’s usual morass of repressed emotion, but this is one hell of a thing to be repressing, and, well, Quentin knows him better than anyone else, after fifty years.

They still haven’t talked about _that_.

Sometimes when Quentin closes his eyes he’s in the park. The Monster approaches him and suddenly its expression softens into Eliot’s face. _It could be a trick_ , Quentin tells himself. But there is no other way he can explain the words that came out of Eliot’s mouth. Those were not the Monster’s words. They didn’t belong to anyone but Quentin and Eliot and the vicious, gaping maw of the thing they’re still not talking about.

Eliot’s fingers in his hair linger a little too long.

“We can get Margo’s banishment repealed,” Eliot says. “It’ll be fun.”

Quentin presses the palms of his hands onto the smooth ceramic surface of the bathtub and instead he feels glazed earthenware tiles, muted colours, crinkling deciduous leaves carpeting the ground, and he looks up into Eliot’s eyes, that forced sparkle as he says, _It could be fun_.

 _This was all just a plan… for me?_ the Monster asks, after he’s pulled the stone out of Iris, pulsing like a heartbeat, blood dripping from his long fingers—

Quentin shakes his head. It’s Eliot standing in front of him; Eliot, as he always was, as he is, again.

“Yeah. Okay.”

He hasn’t been to Fillory since they went on their way to Blackspire. Maybe it’ll be nice. A break from all the shit they’ve gone through. Space to breathe. A nice idea, but Quentin doubts that’s what Eliot has in mind. The worst part about being so in love with someone so similar to himself is that he picks up on every self-destructive tell whether he wants to or not.

Either way. They go to Fillory.

The air is clear. The sun is shining and it reminds Quentin of every single sunny day he looked up at the sky and wished his depression could come and go with the seasons. Bright skies, same old shit.

Inside the castle, Fen runs at Eliot and leaps into his open arms. She’s crying, bawling so loud the castle seems to respond, people coming out of every corner and flooding the throne room, conversations bubbling quietly across the crowd as people work out what’s happening. It’s a welcome fit for a High King, even though that’s not Eliot anymore.

And, in all the commotion, it’s easy for Quentin to slip out. Like he wasn’t there at all.

He missed this place. For all the conflicted feelings he has about Fillory now, feelings he could never have imagined as a tragic fanboy youth, he’s never really lost the thrill of it. The thrill of _magic_. Fillory is all he’d ever wanted from magic, so is it any wonder he still carries a torch for it? He wanders the castle hallways and runs his fingers over the old stone, cool to the touch, centuries old and impossibly solid. A cloud passes over the sun; for a moment he’s standing in shadow, trying to fit himself into the corners of a world that never really had a place for him in the spotlight.

The sun comes back out and then Eliot is standing in front of him. “Yeah,” he says, “it was a bit much for me too.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Quentin says, even though it does; it sounds a damn sight more like Eliot than the Monster ever did. “I’m surprised Fen let you get away.”

“She has High King duties to attend to.” Eliot waves a hand like it doesn’t bother him in the least that Fen’s taken his role. Maybe it doesn’t. “I’m all yours.”

“For the afternoon?”

Eliot shrugs. “Forever. But, yes, we will have to be back for dinner. High King’s orders.”

“Do you want to—” Quentin bites down on the words. He can’t say it.

“Go visit the Mosaic?” Eliot guesses.

Usually having someone you love finish your sentences would be a good thing, but the way they are now, it only makes Quentin’s heart ache. They’re skirting dangerously close to the thing they’re not talking about.

“Yeah,” Quentin says. He tries to laugh it off but the sound doesn’t land right. “For old time’s sake.”

“I never did get to see what it looked like when you finished it.”

“Nothing to write home about.” Maybe one day he’ll tell Eliot it wasn’t the pattern that mattered.

They head out together, alone, no guards following them or well-meaning friends to get in the way of the conversation they ought to be having. Quentin can feel himself beginning to let his guard down, but he’s wary of the impulse to relax. He just—he doesn’t _know_. He doesn’t know where they stand or where Eliot wants them to stand, in between the mixed signals of _not when we have a choice_ and _peaches and plums, motherfucker_.

Fillory is a real picture in the spring. It’s never too hot, a pleasant freshness on the breeze. Wildflowers grow all across the forest floor, new growth sprouts from the trees. The forest opens up into a clearing that’s brilliant green and ringed by a copse of plum trees in full bloom, giving off a scent so sweet it makes Quentin so dizzy he almost collapses.

Eliot _does_ , he sinks to his knees and spreads his hands across the ground and says, “Oh, God.”

Quentin looks ahead and his eyes catch on a house in between the plum trees. A raised square on the ground in front of it, a patchwork of colour, a rock marking a grave.

“It’s changed so much,” Eliot says.

Quentin reaches down to help him back to his feet. All he can do is point and say, “That’s where I buried you.”

“Don’t be morbid,” Eliot says. “Someone _lives_ here. Look, they’ve kept the vegetable garden so well. And the Mosaic—was that how it looked when you… ?”

“I don’t remember,” Quentin says, and Eliot huffs.

They walk downhill, closer to the house. Quentin is hesitant to trespass but there are no sounds, no conversations, so maybe nobody’s home. Besides, he’s sure if someone asked, he could explain it: no big deal, we just grew old in this house, raised a child, discovered the beauty of all life. Oh, it was in another timeline. It wasn’t _really_ us. So it’s nothing to worry about.

He squats by the edge of the Mosaic and picks up a tile. For a moment it’s a brick, he hands it to the Monster, who ties it around the psychic, laughing, _I like this game, Quentin_. Then it’s a tile again, and it’s Eliot’s voice, _Let’s save our overthinking for the puzzle_.

“You ever wonder why we didn’t forget?” Quentin says, before he can think better of it.

“I think,” Eliot says, slowly, “that maybe it was to teach us a lesson.”

What he thinks they were meant to have learnt, Quentin never finds out, because the door to the house creaks open and a head peeks out. It’s an old man, bright white hair and a beard that takes up half his face. For a moment it’s like looking into a mirror; Quentin recognises this man as though they’ve known one another their whole lives. As though it’s his older self, the way he looked when he handed the key to Jane.

But it’s not him, is it? It’s—

“Teddy?” Eliot says, his voice catching.

The old man pushes the door all the way and steps out. “Dad?”

“Teddy,” Eliot says again, “am I hallucinating? How are you _here_?”

Thank God for Eliot’s uncanny ability to be eloquent in a crisis, because Quentin is going through about fifteen different emotions at once, and pinning any one of them down would be like trying to catch a fish in a stream with his bare hands. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out but, “How—?”

“I knew,” Teddy says. He doesn’t sound anything like the young man they raised, but it’s him, for certain. “I knew you’d come back one day. My wife, she—and my children have all long since moved away, but I waited. I knew you’d want to find out if it was real.”

He holds out his hands, and Eliot clutches them. Quentin tries to take a step closer but his feet are made of lead.

“But I thought Jane erased the timeline,” Eliot says. He looks over his shoulder. “Q, that’s what happened, isn’t it? She erased and reset it, we wound up back in the throne room…”

Those last two words are enough to snap Quentin out of it. The throne room, where he’d been an idiot and accidentally let slip that, somewhere along the line, he’d fallen in love. He stumbles to find the words: “Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what—”

“Jane reset _your_ timelines,” Teddy says. A smile splits his face; he looks so much like Quentin, except Quentin knows he’d never smile quite like that. Teddy goes on: “I came back here one day, and you were both gone. I knew it couldn’t be—I always knew you were from another time, another place. I sought out the only person I’d ever heard of who could send people elsewhere in time, and I found Jane. She told me everything.”

Quentin thinks over what he knew about the Mosaic before he saw it for himself: that Jane had arrived to try to solve it, but somebody already had. For that to have happened, the timeline where the Mosaic had been solved couldn’t have been erased entirely. Jane had only put the people who solved it back where they belonged.

The final pieces of a puzzle finally are falling into place: this is why they kept their memories. Because it happened to _them_. Not just an alternate version of the people they were now, but the very same people, in the same bodies, in the same timeline. Their past was their future was their present.

Eliot couldn’t have known this when he said all those things about how it wasn’t them, how they never would have. But that doesn’t matter now. It was, and they did.

“I’m so happy to see you,” Quentin says. “I missed you.”

Most parents don’t expect to outlive their children. But most parents don’t expect to meet their children at eighty-whatever after losing all the years they lived together.

“I missed you too,” Teddy says. “Will you stay for dinner? I want you to tell me everything I’ve missed, and I’ll tell you about your grandchildren.

Quentin and Eliot share a look; there are tears blurring Eliot’s pretty eyes.

“Fen won’t mind,” he says.

“Who’s Fen?” Teddy asks.

“My wife. Long story.”

Eliot never told Teddy about Fen, some long-winded excuse that he didn’t want to confuse Teddy with two moms as well as two dads. But Quentin always knew he didn’t talk about Fen for the same reason he didn’t talk about Margo; it was too painful to revisit those memories when they were a whole lifetime apart.

“Oh,” Teddy says, a knowing smile on his wizened old face, “have you two not married yet, in your timeline?”

Quentin’s not going to lie to his son. “No.”

“But we’ve got time,” Eliot says, saving the softest smile that’s ever graced his face for this stunning moment. “And I’m a lot braver this time around.”

Teddy lets go of Eliot at last and turns to open the door. “Come and see what I’ve done with the place.”

Quentin sticks out his arm and Eliot’s hand finds his without either of them having to look, or to say anything. Their fingers slide together perfectly, with the ease of fifty years’ practice. It doesn’t feel like all those times the Monster took Quentin by the hand, because when Eliot returned, he didn’t leave the Monster any time to linger. He went right back to being himself. Quentin is beginning to realise that this was not just for Eliot’s sake. It was for his, too.

Just maybe, Quentin thinks, this is the space they need to recover: the space where everything grew between them. This tiny house, with its beautiful garden and its clean air, is where they’ll gather up the ashes of everything that’s happened and throw them to the soil. Then another plum tree will take up root and, with time, it’ll flourish.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [dreamwidth](https://necessarian.dreamwidth.org/)!


End file.
